That's laissez-faire capitalism. It always devolves into an oligarchy, as it's the only logical endpoint of runaway capital. Free markets create the material conditions that lead to them becoming captured and unfree.
[−]cmrdporcupine · 2026-11-15 Sun 15:56 UTC ·
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This is exactly the answer, and it's why so-called "libertarianism" is not just naive but destructive (and end-result authoritarian) as an ideology: it has a fundamental misunderstanding of what the "free market" actually is behind the scenes, imagining it as some sort of neutral/neutralizing / democratic mysterious force that prevents accumulation of power and being in opposition to "the State" when it is the opposite. "Free market" systems create the State and then dominate it and the interests involved create power systems for their own accumulation of dominance. And the end result is oligarchy.
The counterveiling force has to be an organized working class that uses unions, political parties, and democratic force to take back at least some control of the state and market and force its use for social means. And this is a constant battle. If we start to lose, which has happened progressively since the 70s, Trumpist oligarchy is the result. Or worse.
> This is exactly the answer, and it's why so-called "libertarianism" is not just naive but destructive (and end-result authoritarian)
Its why I can have some respect for the Dark Enlightenment guys. At least they take their idea of libertarianism to its natural conclusion.
[−]cmrdporcupine · 2026-11-15 Sun 17:30 UTC ·
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I mean, "respect" is one way of framing it.
I do think that Ayn Randian "objectivism" with its "altruism is a moral defect" is only one bad LSD trip away from just realizing what they really mean is just fully "might makes right", fetishizing power for power's sake, and embracing an explicit fascist ethos as a result.
Ideologically so concerned with identifying repression as a product of "collectivism" (and seeing "collectivism" everywhere) that they've obscured where the real violence lays & the OG violence that led to the establishment of enclosure and property rights in the first instance. Marc Andreesen's weird manifesto some years ago was fully on this path.
In that world view, "liberty" basically comes to mean: "I take your stuff." (and here's some slight of hand on how I've made it ok to do that, and why it's bad if it's the guvmint' that does that instead)
The counterveiling force has to be an organized working class that uses unions, political parties, and democratic force to take back at least some control of the state and market and force its use for social means. And this is a constant battle. If we start to lose, which has happened progressively since the 70s, Trumpist oligarchy is the result. Or worse.
Its why I can have some respect for the Dark Enlightenment guys. At least they take their idea of libertarianism to its natural conclusion.
I do think that Ayn Randian "objectivism" with its "altruism is a moral defect" is only one bad LSD trip away from just realizing what they really mean is just fully "might makes right", fetishizing power for power's sake, and embracing an explicit fascist ethos as a result.
Ideologically so concerned with identifying repression as a product of "collectivism" (and seeing "collectivism" everywhere) that they've obscured where the real violence lays & the OG violence that led to the establishment of enclosure and property rights in the first instance. Marc Andreesen's weird manifesto some years ago was fully on this path.
In that world view, "liberty" basically comes to mean: "I take your stuff." (and here's some slight of hand on how I've made it ok to do that, and why it's bad if it's the guvmint' that does that instead)